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Re: Tune Books (fwd)

At 03:36 PM 23/02/97 -0500, you wrote:

>I've played out of both and have come to the same conclusion that the OLD 
>are in fact better than the NEW!  I believe you were right in saying that 
>the arrangements of tunes have been arranged so that they are more easily 
>played by small corps bands that are not quite up-to-par like other corps 
>bands.

I don't know that it's a case of other bands being "not quite up-to-par".
Although I think I know what you're getting at, the majority of corps
bands, particularly in Canada are not always blessed with all the parts on
a given Sunday and so a more thinly scored set of tune books can make sense
in such a situation.  The problem then becomes what happens when you have a
good full band.  (See next paragraph.)

>To my knowledge, most of these tunes were arranged by Ray Steadman-Allen.  
>If you check out the arrangement of ASCALON (# ?, I forget) to which we sing 
>the words FAIREST LORD JESUS you will certainly notice the exact 
>similarity in the opening statement of Steadman-Allen's DAYSTAR!  Wether  
>these new arrangements of the tunes are bad wouldn't be fair to say, they are
>just easier to play.  I will say that some of the tunes are pretty 'lame'
but 
>this can't be blamed on Steadman-Allen, he just arranged the tunes.  Some 
>are still a challange though, not all SA bands play #385 very well :)

If you have a good full band most of the tunes will sound good, but not as
rich as what the old arrangements were.  It's kind of a "diet" tune book -
all the tunes with half the calories.  Both still leave me with a less than
satisfied feeling and in the worse cases, a bad taste in my mouth!

>I do miss some of the old tunes but I do enjoy the new as well, too bad 
>we can't have a book with both! (for the challenged & not so challenged 
>bands).  Is there any harm in that?  From what I understand, the use of 
>the old books seems to be strictly forbidden!  What is the reasoning 
>behind this??

I must admit to loving "Will Ye No' Come Back Again?" which is in the new
tune book only.  There are many others, although I have yet to hear the
need for "Burning, Burning".  Almost any time this is played will be after
the sermon during the altar call and a band just does not do it for me -
leave it to the piano and organ.

>Any way, I think the OLD euphonium part is definety a big loss too.  Those 
>old arrangements were great!  Too bad we couldn't have the best of both! :(

I know.  Like I said before, the composers/arrangers of the new tunes books
are twice the musicians I could ever hope to be, but that doesn't mean that
I have to like what they've written.  They wrote primarily to suit a
particular need (smaller ensembles) and in doing so at times abandoned some
better music in the process.

Getting back to something that the original poster said, I'm curious about
just how many bands around the world shipped their old red tune books off
to Africa or South America.  I know of a few bands that did (although we
retained a copy of each book, just in case).  There must be some wonderful
music being made somewhere!

Erik Pittock
pittock@xxxxxxxx


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